


Your Attention

by LogicGunn



Series: Your Attention [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Getting Together, Guide Rodney McKay, M/M, SGC, Sentinal John Sheppard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24947989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogicGunn/pseuds/LogicGunn
Summary: “Oh, stop sulking. I’ll talk to you when I’m done, but I’m at a critical stage here, and your neanderthal-esque emotional turmoil is a diversion I can’t afford. Go get beaten up by some marines or something while you wait for me.”
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Series: Your Attention [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848436
Comments: 33
Kudos: 295





	Your Attention

**Author's Note:**

> Mific made [A Big McShep Sentinel-and-Guide List for SGA](https://mific.dreamwidth.org/158149.html) (which I’ve been working through for days now) and then Melagan posted a [Plot Bunny Challenge](https://melagan.dreamwidth.org/515010.html) and between the two of them I was called out, so here we go.  
> (Seriously, if you're on a Sentinel/Guide McShep binge, go check out Mific's list. It'll keep you going for a few days.)

When the elevator doors screech closed, John leans against the back wall and watches the display tick down as it descends past each floor. He spent the weekend being buttered up by an endless wave of global elites, his parent’s latest attempt to pair him up with a guide of their choosing, someone with the right connections and breeding. It took all his energy to keep the incessantly probing minds of the voracious guides out of his head and it’s all he can do now to keep himself upright (with a little help from the wall). He’d hoped that after nearly forty years everyone would let him be – after all, he’s survived this long on his own, it’s a pretty sure bet that he’ll manage the rest of his life without a guide – but he forgot to factor in the covetous ambition of his family. It doesn’t matter that he’d left home and joined the Air Force as soon as he was old enough, eschewing his inheritances and his assumed position on the board of Sheppard industries in favour of throwing himself into the sky with arms wide open. He’s still a Sheppard and no matter where he goes in life that means something to almost everyone he meets and ignites a hunger in even the least ambitious of guides. 

His father’s attempts to bring him back into the fold he managed to ignore for years, but his mother’s emotional appeal left him feeling guilty enough to acquiesce, and so he found himself on Saturday night dressed and prepped by a tailor and the family barber (the latter despairing at the rebellious nature of the Sheppard hair) and thrust into the limelight at a family event, forced to smile and shake hands and air-kiss until his cheeks ached and he couldn’t escape the cloying cloud of perfume and cologne, tobacco and expensive brandy. Though disappointed by John’s lack of a new bond, his family were bolstered by his social successes, enough that he escaped the Sheppard’s Colorado home early Sunday morning without fuss to head back to Cheyenne Mountain, eager to wash off the stench of the elite and change into his well-worn BDUs. 

John lets his head thunk back against the metal and closes his eyes, concentrating on his senses and pulling them back into order, tempering them as best he can in his frazzled state. But something niggles at the edge of his awareness, a quiet thump-thump-thump that persists no matter how much control he exerts on his hearing. When the elevator comes to a creaking stop at level 11 and the doors rattle open, he checks in at the security point and makes small talk with the airmen on duty (who inform him that “the Colonel is in the astrophysics lab, sir!”) but his focus remains on the thumping sound. It gives him a sense of...something, he can’t quite name it, but whatever it is it’s a good feeling. He switches to the other elevator, the one that will take him deeper down into the mountain. It stinks of sweat and GSR, dirt and damp leather. An SG team have clearly just used it on return from a wet and muddy world; SG7 according to the sickly bouquet of Captain Isaac’s infamous floral hand cream. 

Pressing the button for level 19 John focuses on the sound and as he descends it gets louder. It becomes apparent that it’s a heartbeat, but why he can still hear one single heartbeat when he’s effortlessly blocking out hundreds of them, he doesn’t know. He lets the wall prop him up again as the elevator goes down, the rhythmic dah-dum dah-dum dah-dum blocking out all other sounds, feeling it deep in his bones. Not even the squeal of the elevator’s hydraulics penetrates through the rhythmic pulse, and it isn’t until someone touches his arm that he realises that the elevator has stopped and the doors are open, O’Neill looking at him with concern. 

“Sir!” says John, pulling himself out of his slouch and saluting on instinct, trying to pull his mind away from the heartbeat. 

“Jeez, Colonel,” says O’Neill. “I thought I broke you out of that habit already.” 

“Sorry sir,” says John, scrubbing his prickly jaw. “It’s been a long weekend.” 

O’Neill eyes his rumpled shirt with a smirk. “I’ll bet it has. Come on, I’m due for an update in one of the labs. You can tell me all about it after Carter shows off her new toy.” 

John follows O’Neill down the corridor, passing by numerous closed lab doors, each one busy with scientists, both military and civilian. At the end of the corridor is a set of double doors, and the heartbeat he’s been hearing pounds in his ears, so strong and steady and coming from right behind them. O’Neill doesn’t head through them though, and John has to tear himself away and follow him through a smaller door to the side, up a set of stairs into an observation deck above the large lab. There’s a handful of scientists in the room; John recognises Colonel Carter and Doctors Kavanagh, Kusanagi, Lee and Zelenka. Poking out from underneath a large, powerful electronic device (John can feel it hum through three-inch-thick plexiglass and something like 15 meters of air) are a pair of unfamiliar legs, strong and stocky and attached to a hidden body that houses the heart he can’t tune out. 

Carter looks up and sees them standing at the window. She smiles and heads over to the wall and switches on the intercom so they can hear the lab from inside the observation deck. John notes that O’Neill doesn’t switch on their end. _“You’re looking at Rodney’s prototype of the_ _naquadah_ _generator mark four B, sir,”_ she says. _“Bigger than the other_ _naquadah_ _generators, but exponentially more powerful. This one could power the entire Eastern seaboard for a year.”_

_“Two years,”_ says a smug voice that almost floors John with the impact it has on him. He stumbles and grabs hold of the back of a chair in front of him, gripping so tightly his knuckles go white. That voice, he’d know it anywhere, he’s dreamed of it for so long...whoever the man under the generator is, it’s his guide. He’s absolutely certain of it. He watches the feet fidget mindlessly as the man works, speechless with a sense of anticipation and a building need to go down there to pull him out from where he’s working and rub up against him. The feet still suddenly and the sound of something metal being dropped echoes through the intercom. 

_“Someone remove the Sentinel from the observation room,”_ says the voice. _“They’re disrupting my concentration.”_

John sucks in a breath to object, there’s no way he’s letting the man out of his sight, not now that he’s found him. 

_“Oh, stop sulking. I’ll talk to you when I’m done, but I’m at a critical stage here, and your neanderthal-esque emotional turmoil is a diversion I can’t afford. Go get beaten up by some marines or something while you wait for me.”_

O’Neill looks at John and raises an eyebrow. “McKay? Really?” 

Before John can respond, the voice comes over the intercom again. _“Doctor M. Rodney McKay PhD, PhD, at your service. Stop thinking so loud please.”_

“Uh...yeah,” John says to O’Neill, reaching out to pull his senses back into the room. “I felt his heartbeat the second I stepped in the elevator.” 

O’Neill smirks. “Well, I guess there’s someone for everyone. I didn’t even know he was a guide.” 

“He’s not just _a_ guide, Colonel,” says John, eyes fixed on Rodney. “He’s _my_ guide. Unless you order me otherwise, but even then-” 

“Oh, hell no, Sheppard. I don’t get involved in Sentinel business and even if I did, I have no objections. I’ll have admin cancel his ticket back to Russia.” 

“Russia?” asks John, tilting his head towards O’Neill but not breaking his line of vision with his guide. 

“He’s been based there for the past year, bringing them up to speed on some of the research we’ve been doing here and working on the generator specs with them as part of our treaty to borrow their stargate.” 

“I see.” 

O’Neill claps him on the shoulder on his way out. “I’ll reassign him to the SGC and ask Walter to find you some double quarters to share.” 

John doesn’t reply, can’t form the words, too lost in the sight of those feet tapping the ground. Whatever his guide is doing under there it’s complicated; he calls out for various tools, directing the rest of the scientists from under the generator with confidence and practised ease. Even Carter’s doing what he asks, though when he gives her an instruction John notes that he frames it as a question rather than an order. 

The intercom transmits every little distracting sound in the room in stereo, and John turns it down to dull everything to the low-level vibrations so he can focus solely on Rodney’s heartbeat. It’s strong, a steady ninety-two beats per minute, no irregularities or murmurs, and it feels like something slots into place, some missing piece of his puzzle finally found and pressed in, his raison d'être wrapped up in an ink-stained lab coat and size eleven walking boots. 

John pictures the two of them, alone, wrapped around each other in a passionate embrace, imagines sinking into his guide, their breaths hitching and hearts pounding. He sees them moving together, holding on to one another, the two of them against the world. He honestly never really believed that he would find his guide, he expected to muddle through life alone forever, distant from everyone and never knowing the feel of another’s hands on his skin. He doesn’t know Rodney, not yet, but he’s surprised to find that he can’t imagine his life without him. 

Rodney sighs loudly and makes noise about finishing up with the generator – _“I’m not going to get this done with all that primal fervour swirling around in my head.”_ – and John rushes out of the observation room and down the stairs to meet him in the corridor. It’s only a couple of minutes before the scientist comes storming out through the double doors, distracted by his lab coat as he tries to pull his arm out. He stops suddenly when he sees John, blue eyes so bright under the fluorescent lighting of the corridor, his sleeve bunched up around his wrist. John steps forward and unsticks the sleeve from Rodney’s watch then pulls the lab coat off and flings it with great precision into the washing basket tucked in the entrance to the lab. All eyes are on them from inside the lab, and John’s relieved when the door closes and interrupts their collective gaze. 

“Guide,” says John, and he smooths his hands up and down Rodney’s arms, taking in the scent of him for the first time and feeling the quickening pulse through his fingertips. 

“Huh,” says Rodney. “Didn’t realise you were a guy.” 

John lets his hands move up unto Rodney’s neck and leans in, pressing his nose behind Rodney’s ear and breathing in deep. “Is that a problem?” he asks as Rodney’s hands slide up his arms and grip his biceps. 

“No. But two things. One: I’m not the subservient type, so if you’re searching for a pushover, you can keep looking. Two: my work absolutely vital to the success of the SGC. I’ll put you first in the grand scheme of things, but don’t expect me to drop everything every time you want my attention.” 

“I think I’ve already proven that I have no problem waiting for you and that I’ll respect your autonomy.” 

“True enough.” 

John licks a wet stripe across Rodney’s neck, making them both shudder. “Do you wanna get out of here?” he asks, pulling back to lock eyes with his guide. 

“Oh, god yes.” 

“I have a room upstairs...” 

“Perfect. Let’s go! Chop chop!” 


End file.
